Column

Atheism

Creed

15 September 2023

6 min read

Confessions of an atheist philosopher Part 5: leaping for truth

In the fifth of a series, philosopher Stefani Ruper recalls the night she decided to do something, to get data about God.

Stefani Ruper

Stefani Ruper is a philosopher specialising in the ethics of belief and Associate Member of Christ Church College, Oxford. She received her PhD from the Theology & Religion faculty at the University of Oxford in 2020.

A black and white close up of a women in a street at night, turning to look around at a neion 'open' sign.

Trevin Rudy on Unsplash.

My name is Stefani. I was a committed atheist for almost my entire life. I studied religion to try to figure out how to have spiritual fulfillment without God. I tried writing books on spirituality for agnostics and atheists, but I gave up because the answers were terrible. Two years after completing my PhD, I finally realised that that’s because the answer is God.

Today, I explain how and why I decided to walk into Christian faith.

Here at Seen and Unseen I am publishing a six-article series highlighting key turning points or realisations I made on my walk into faith. It tells my story, and it tells our story too. Read part 1 here.

Inhale…two, three, four… Exhale... two, three, four…. Inhale… two, three, four… exhale… two, three four…

I was laying in bed, staring at the ceiling, doing breathing exercises trying to calm my body and mind. The clock on my bedside table flashed 3:59. I had a lecture on twentieth century French metaphysics to attend in four hours. But I couldn’t sleep.

Night time anxiety had been my habit for as long as I could remember. It all started when I was four years old and first asked myself what would it be like to be dead? while trying to fall asleep one night. Since then, my anxiety often started with normal, day-to-day worries (did I complete enough items on my to-do list today?). But they almost always spiraled into bigger concerns. I always found my way to questions like Is this really all there is?

I sighed and kept on with my breathing exercises. Inhale… two, three, four… exhale… two, three, four…

But then…

Then, I had an idea.

I blinked and sat up.

God might be there!, I thought to myself.

God might have been there all along!

I started to laugh, incredulous.

Here’s the two things I had just learned that made me finally wake up to this extraordinary possibility.

Interpretation is a choice

When I was an atheist, I often said that if God existed and wanted us to believe in Him, God would make it obvious. God would write something like 'Believe in Me!' in letters in the sky. God would give us indubitable evidence of His existence.

But interpretation is a matter of choice.

It’s like a story a man once told at my church. He was out walking in the woods at night. He said, God if you’re there, give me a sign! A shooting star went through the sky. He then shrugged and said to himself, oh, it’s a coincidence.

I had always told the story of my life as a string of coincidences. No matter how uncanny an event, I always assumed it was pure chance. But what if I had been ignoring the underlying narrative and purpose to things all along? God could be communicating with us and steering the course of our lives all the time, but if we never took the initiative to interpret our experiences with Him in them, we would never see Him.

The only way for me to assess God’s possible role in my life would be to start interpreting events as if God were the author. I wouldn’t have to get rid of my “pure coincidence” view. I would only have to add this new one. Then, I could compare the two.

Openness to evidence is a choice

The philosopher William James makes the extraordinary, underappreciated point that there are certain kinds of beliefs you can’t get the evidence for unless you believe them first. One example is jumping over a chasm or gap on a hiking trail. You can’t successfully jump over the chasm and get the evidence that you’re capable of jumping it unless you believe you can do it first.

God is similar in a very specific sense: evidence of God’s presence in your life is only available to you if you believe first.

Imagine your heart is a room with a door. God could be shining a floodlight at the door all the time, but if you don’t open the door a crack, God’s light will never be able to shine through. I now believe that God can do a lot of amazing things, but God doesn’t impose. It’s up to all of us to crack open our doors.

Once you do, you can start to get experiential evidence. This might be feeling loved, experiencing peace and joy that surpass your previous understanding, or unusual confidence or resilience amidst troubles. It might be a sense of forgiveness beyond what you’ve known before. Or it might be experiences of healing and personal growth—often of issues that you’ve tried to heal multiple ways.

The greatest hypothesis of all was out there waiting to be tested—and I wasn’t participating!

The leap of faith is a leap for truth

I used to think that faith was a betrayal of the truth. If I wanted to be loyal to the truth, I needed to stick to the “bare facts” provided by science. I shouldn’t ever claim anything beyond them, on the off chance the claim might be false.

However...

When it comes to God (as well as many other things, such as what it means to be a good person), the only way to find out what’s true is to put the belief into play. It’s to embrace a hypothesis, act on it, and see what happens.

When I jolted up out of bed that night, I realised that throughout my entire life I had thought that I was being loyal to the truth, but what I was actually doing was standing on the sidelines. The greatest hypothesis of all was out there waiting to be tested—and I wasn’t participating! The human species is in its infancy. There’s so much we don’t know about existence. What if the universe is lovingly Created? What if there are dimensions beyond what we can see and touch?

The truly courageous thing, I now believe, is the opposite of what I’d always thought. It isn’t to refrain from belief. It’s to dare to believe.

The verdict

That night, I decided I would try to get data about God. I’d walk into a life of prayer, worship, and faith. I’d work on re-interpreting my story with God in it. I’d identify biases or misconceptions I had about faith and educate myself about them. I’d ask God to help me see, feel, and believe, if He was there.

I’m less than a year in. But today I’m sleeping better, healing deep emotional wounds, overcoming unhealthy habits, finding peace, stepping deeper into joy, and experiencing feelings of invulnerability where I used to feel the most vulnerable. This sense of invulnerability is beyond anything I’ve ever experienced before, like a spring of confidence and peace welling up from depths beyond me. I consider this data for God.

Might I be wrong? Absolutely. But at the end of the day I am just one person. All I can do is go out and get some data and share what I find, contributing my little piece to the species-wide quest for the truth of things.

So go out and get your data. Take a chance on God, if you like. Crack open your door. See if light shines through. Let me and others know what you find.

Article

Atheism

Belief

Creed

13 October 2025

4 min read

Atheism discovers Christianity — just not the inconvenient bits

When sceptics start praising faith for its vibes and values, you know the secular ship is taking on water

Jonah Horne

Jonah Horne is a priest, living and working in Devon.

A spotlit round table with podcast guests around it.

Steve Bartlett and guests discuss belief.

Diary of a CEO.

Atheism in the age of authenticity and self-expressive secularism is inherently cannibalistic. I’m not suggesting that Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens are losing their minds and devouring one another. But what I am proposing is that atheism, held within today’s philosophical waters, cannot not affirm the thing it so vehemently denies: faith.

There’s a fascinating moment in a round table conversation with Steven Bartlett (Diary of a CEO) and Alex O’Connor (Cosmic Skeptic). The former presents a case of his friend whose life is radically changed when he becomes a Christian. In some senses it’s a classic despair to hope story. Bartlett concludes by asking O’Connor “what would you say to this friend?” The answer that follows flawed me. O’Conor, an ardent atheist, responds by essentially saying “if these things work, then I’d encourage him to continue doing them.”

In a similar vein, last year Richard Dawkins professed his faith in cultural Christianity. Dawkin’s well documented and fresh alignment with Christianity is accordingly founded upon its ‘fundamental decency.’ Which just to be clear, according to the biologist, is very unlike Islam. Sadly, his newfound respect hasn’t prohibited New Atheism’s inherent Islamaphobia, it just seems to be masquerading in more sympathetic clothing.

Amongst these stories and other examples there seems to be a resurgence, or at least a growing respect, in Christian religion and faith. This can also be seen in church attendance and statistics around those professing faith. And whilst Dawkin’s move away from religious degradation towards cultural affirmation can, in some senses, be welcomed; there is an inherent flaw in both his and O’Connor’s perspectives when held in light of Christianity’s central claims.

For O’Connor, Christianity is seemingly commendable if it leads to self-actualisation, self- fulfilment and a privatised sense of hope. From O’Connor’s atheistic vantage point, the goal of the human is self-actualisation. When confronted by Christianity as a means of this fulfilment, his philosophical stance begins to eat itself. Similarly, for Dawkins, Christianity is a useful tool for the construction and preservation of Western societies. As our country goes through rapid change and our cities exponentially expand in size and multiculturalism Dawkins finds himself affirming the faith he so enthusiastically mocked as a means of security. His atheism inevitably eats itself.

Whilst different, Christianity in both of these cases is used as a crutch. The faith becomes a prop either for societal betterment or self-fulfilment: it is a reductive perspective that views Christianity as the best truth amongst other truths on offer. It approaches religion as a pick-n-mix sweet shop, with Christianity currently the best flavour.

However, for Christians, their faith is not a truth amongst other truths, it is the truth. It is not primarily reasoned, discovered or affirmed upon positive reviews but is fundamentally revealed to us and encouraged by a Triune God of love. Reason, positive societal change and personal fulfilment are not bad things in of themselves but when approaching Jesus, they are utterly secondary. This revelation, when fully recognised, reveals O’Connor and Dawkin’s understandings of Christianity as inherently stunted. For O’Connor his affirmation of faith, when positively leading to self-actualisation, would struggle to reckon with St. Stephen’s death found in the book of Acts. The first Christian martyr pleaded for God’s mercy upon his murderers as they launched stones at him. His faith led to incredible courage in the face of intense violence but I’m not entirely sure you could say it led to a widely accepted notion of self-actualisation. For Dawkin’s his affirmation, of Christianity as a pillar for society, should be held in light of the early church’s teachings on radical hospitality, their startling financial generosity and the faith’s ongoing care for the alien or foreigner. This, I would contend, would unsettle the biologist’s divorce of culture and faith.

The challenge for Christians when confronted by seemingly positive reactions from historically antagonistic voices is to refuse the subtle domestication of the ancient faith. I appreciate O’Connor’s openness to the Christianity and I commend Dawkin’s softening tone. However, their self-defeating and cannibalistic atheism can only affirm Christianity as crutch for their own agendas. They concede defeat but on their own terms. Their vision accepts a partial understanding of following Jesus, an understanding that has been moderated and regulated to fit into their preconceived philosophical and societal agendas. However, for Christians, Jesus is not someone who affirms our predetermined frameworks but instead devastates our self-obsessive tendencies and overwhelms our insecurities with a profound love best revealed in his life, death and resurrection. This realisation is ultimately revealed to us, not on our terms but received freely as a gift. It is given, not grasped or owned, but received.

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